Council delays vote on proposed firing range land swap

HYANNIS – Neighbors of the shuttered gun range located in the 1,100-acre West Barnstable Conservation Area on Service Road will have at least one more month of quiet but it looks less likely than ever that it will last.

HYANNIS – Neighbors of the shuttered gun range located in the 1,100-acre West Barnstable Conservation Area on Service Road will have at least one more month of quiet but it looks less likely than ever that it will last.

During its regular meeting Thursday night Barnstable Town Council voted 8-3 to postpone a decision on a land swap that would have cleared the way for the shooting range to reopen nearly 18 months after it was closed because the town didn’t have the proper insurance to cover operations there.

The proposal to exchange 16.3 acres of conservation land where the range is currently located for 17 acres of town-owned land off Breed’s Hill Road in Barnstable met with the same opposition that the range itself has garnered during discussions on how and whether to reopen it.

“It was never part of the plan to give up part of this land for a shooting range,” said Hilary Sandler of West Barnstable.

Sandler and other residents who live in the area argued that Town Meeting had voted to make the area conservation land in the late 1960s and that the range was established illegally nearly 20 years later.

Users of the range countered that the area was used for shooting practice going back to the 1950s and 1960s.

“I personally shot on that range in the sixties,” Town Councilor James H. Crocker Jr. said, adding that whether it was an official range or just a sandpit may be open to argument.

West Barnstable’s Town Councilor Phil Wallace said he had researched the potential impact of operating the gun range on his constituents who live nearby and it would be substantial, equaling a drop in the average value of properties in the area of 3 percent or $10,000.

“I cannot support this land swap for that reason,” Wallace said.

During a presentation before the vote, Assistant Town Manager Mark Ells said that since the range was closed town officials worked on new regulations and other changes to secure the proper insurance coverage.

In September 2013, however, the state Division of Conservation Services sent a letter to the town’s Conservation Division explaining that in order to continue to operate the range at its current location, it would have to be removed from conservation and another parcel of equal or greater size would be required to take its place as conservation land.

“This piece of property had to be without restriction,” Ells said.

To make the swap requires a majority vote of the town’s Conservation Commission, a two-thirds vote of the Town Council and a two-thirds vote of both branches of the state Legislature.

On June 24 the Conservation Commission voted in favor of the swap but a necessary memorandum of understanding to seal the deal between the town and state conservation officials still had not been signed as of Thursday night, Ells said.

Crocker, a Realtor, said he was uncomfortable with the idea of moving forward without having the memorandum of understanding signed and moved that the vote be postponed to Sept. 18.

Massachusetts Division of Conservation Services Director Robert O’Connor told the councilors that there was a last minute question raised about whether the agreement had to undergo Massachusetts Environmental Policy Act review which had prompted the delay in signing it.

“We will sign the (memorandum of understanding),” he said. “It’s just a matter of just kind of having this review.”

A proposed amendment could have made the land swap contingent on the memorandum of understanding being signed, Town Attorney Ruth Weil said, but Crocker said he still wanted to delay the decision.

“This isn’t resolved so we’re in no position to vote on it,” he said.

After the vote to postpone, Lisa Hendrickson of West Barnstable said the range’s original construction was illegal and therefore it shouldn’t be reopened.

“The range was built in a residential area,” she said.

Additionally it abuts conservation land and affects the ability to use that land as was intended, she said.

“We’re waiting to see what happens,” she said about whether neighbors would take legal action if the Town Council and the Legislature approve the land exchange.